Foursquare overhauls user history pages with entirely new interface
For a lot of users, one of the most important reasons for checking in is keeping a personal history of all the places you’ve been so you can refer to it later. Foursquare’s history feature, however, has been the only part of the service that’s remained largely unchanged since foursquare launched in 2009. Its reverse chronological list was a pain to browse through page by page and you could forget trying to mine any sort of data from it. Luckily, sites like 4sqmap.com evolved to help us make sense of it all.
That all changes today, though, with the launch of foursquare’s beautiful new history page. Like its predecessor, your history is presented in reverse chronological order, but offers all sorts of new features for filtering and making use of the data. It also includes all your foursquare photos and comments for the first time right in the feed instead of requiring a separate click to see them.
You can browse to any point in your history by using the date selector at the top of the page. A map on the right side of the page lets you zoom in to an area to see just your check-ins in that area (or you can type a city name in the box below). It’s especially useful for finding all your check-ins from last summer’s vacation, or all the times you’ve visited New York, for instance.
Other filters let you see all your check-ins with a particular friend or in a certain category. In the future, foursquare says you’ll be able to narrow it down by venue, as well.
The new history feature is a vast improvement over the old one. The inclusion of images makes it much more engaging and fun to browse while the filtering features make it easy to find specific things or places from your past. It will take users some time to get used to it, but once they realize the power the new history page affords with regards to seeing their past, I think they’ll actually be more likely to check in.
What do you think of the new history feature? Now that it’s actually usable, will you be more likely to check in?
